Nile Gardiner is a Washington-based foreign affairs analyst and political commentator. A former aide to Margaret Thatcher, Gardiner has served as a foreign policy adviser to two US presidential campaigns. He appears frequently on American and British television, including Fox News Channel, BBC, and Fox Business Network.

Germany wants a new EU Treaty – David Cameron should respond with an EU referendum

Germany’s leading news magazine Der Spiegel has a bombshell report today revealing that Berlin will press for a new EU Treaty later this year, with the aim of deepening European integration in order to enforce the new fiscal pact signed by 25 EU member states. The Spiegel article states that:

Germany is pushing for a new treaty governing the construction of the European Union, and it is calling for a convention to draft the pact to be convened before the end of the year. The treaty would pave the way for deeper European integration and would create a new legal foundation for the bloc. Chancellor Angela Merkel's European Union policy adviser, Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut, has expressed this desire in discussions with high-level EU officials in Brussels, SPIEGEL has learned.

A date for the beginning of the convention is expected to be fixed at an EU summit in December. Merkel has been pushing for some time now to complement the recently approved fiscal pact, which harmonizes budget policies within 25 of the EU's 27 countries, with a political union. Germany would like to see, for example, a legal basis that would give the European Court of Justice the jurisdiction to monitor the budgets of member states and to punish deficit offenders.

The Spiegel report follows in the wake of a series of statements by senior German officials calling for greater political and economic integration, or as Chancellor Angela Merkel puts it, “more Europe, not less Europe.” Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaüble has been at the forefront of German calls for greater European integration, recently declaring his support for a fully-fledged central government in Brussels, with a new Parliament or Senate holding the power to enact legislation across the European Union. As Schaüble put it to Der Spiegelback in June:

Those who want a strong Europe also have to be willing to surrender decisions to Brussels… there are still too many national competencies in foreign and security policy. Europe should speak more effectively and clearly with one voice in the world.

… It would be best to have a body representing the countries that's based on the model of the German Bundesrat or the US Senate, with each country dispatching a certain number of representatives to this body. Of course, all laws would require a majority in the body, as well as in the parliament.

There can be little doubt that a German-led drive for a new EU Treaty will meet with strong resistance in some parts of Europe – the Czech Republic in particular – and face widespread public opposition. But one should never underestimate the determination of European elites to drive through a treaty with scant regard for public opinion or the views of democratically elected leaders who may not be in thrall to the idea of a European superstate.

The British government, however, has an opportunity to block a new treaty, and strike a blow for the principle of national sovereignty in Europe. David Cameron should live up to his promise in the Conservative Party manifesto to hold a popular vote “on any transfer of powers to the Europe Union." As his own 2010 document stated:

In future, the British people must have their say on any transfer of powers to the European Union. We will amend the 1972 European Communities Act so that any proposed future Treaty that transferred areas of power, or competences, would be subject to a referendum – a ‘referendum lock’.

But the prime minister should go one step further, and also pledge to hold a broader vote on British membership of the European Union itself. The demand for an EU referendum is growing in intensity. The Telegraph’s own online polling shows that nine in ten British voters want a referendum on Europe, with a Times/ Populus poll putting the figure at eight in ten, including 49 percent who back an immediate referendum.

Britain is an increasingly Eurosceptic nation, deeply uncomfortable with the existing relationship with Brussels. As the latest Angus Reid poll shows, 54 percent of Britons “say EU membership has been negative for the UK; 33 percent believe it has been positive.” According to the same poll, 46 percent of Britons would vote to leave the EU in a referendum, with just 29 percent voting to stay in.

In its drive for a new EU Treaty, Germany is pressing for a new era of deeper European integration in response to the Eurozone financial crisis. It is completely the wrong solution to the continent’s myriad economic woes. In effect Merkel is throwing down the gauntlet to Britain and other European nations who are rightly nervous about the European Project. David Cameron’s response should be simple – to give the British people the final say over their own destiny in Europe. The choice is clear cut. Between a European superstate doomed to failure, or a return to national sovereignty and self-determination. It is abundantly clear that most Britons would gladly vote for the latter if given the freedom to do so.